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Writer's pictureTroy Kinney

Poem: Introduction to a Sermon

Updated: Oct 24, 2019



Over the years I have sometimes sat and listened to a pastor deliver his sermon and wonder, is this how we should approach Scripture? We got the Greek, the Hebrew, the NIV, the NAS, the ESV, expository style a must, classic and contemporary commentaries, and grammar, the exegesis

and don’t forget the acronyms, and acrostics. I think we become so busy and sophisticated in tearing scriptures apart word by word, and verse by verse that we miss the beauty of it all.

It reminds me of the poem “Introduction to a Poem” by Billy Collins. So, I imitated his poem here, mine is called:

Introduction to a Sermon

We are asked to take Scripture

And raise it up to the sun

Slide open its curtains

Or stick our head inside its doors

I say drop a child into the Gospels

And watch him probe his way around,

Or walk through the Bible’s rooms

And feel fearfully for a light switch.

I wonder if God

Sometimes

Wants us to row a kayak

through the living waters of Scripture

And wave at him smiling from the shore.

But all they want to do

Is tie the Bible to a chair with rope

And torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

To find out what it really means. -TK

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Here is a link to Billy Collins original poem:

Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry” from The Apple that Astonished Paris. Copyright � 1988, 1996 by Billy Collins.

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